NYU Langone brings health dashboard to data-starved cities

Brookdale Hospital appoints new CEO

Brookdale Hospital, one of three struggling Brooklyn facilities that plan to merge into a new health system, said Thursday it is appointing veteran hospital executive Dominick Stanzione its next president and CEO, effective Aug. 1.

Stanzione has spent more than 30 years in hospital management and has served as executive vice president and chief operating officer at Maimonides Medical Center since 2011. He will take over as Brookdale forges a new alliance, the One Brooklyn Health System, with Interfaith Medical Center in Bedford-Stuyvesant and Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center in Midwood. The group is working to apply for $700 million in capital funding slated by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to improve health care services in central and eastern Brooklyn.

"Mr. Stanzione is the perfect candidate to take the reins of Brookdale at this critical juncture," Alex Rovt, chairman of Brookdale's board, said in a statement.

Stanzione replaces Mark Toney, a management consultant who led Brookdale for more than five years. During that time, Toney relied heavily on state funding to keep open a hospital vital to its community. He had worked to build the trauma unit—which treats a gunshot victim about every 36 hours—and attract doctors in specialties such as neurology and orthopedics.

Toney also oversaw Brookdale's 2012 separation from the Medisys Health System, which runs hospitals in Jamaica and Flushing, Queens.

Brookdale's patients are disproportionately uninsured, and many others pay through Medicaid, which reimburses hospitals less than it costs to provide care. The hospital also needs to invest in its aging facilities to keep pace with its competitors. Winning capital funding from the state initiative, part of Cuomo's $1.4 billion Vital Brooklyn program, will be critical for Brookdale to complete renovations. —J.L.

Aetna moving HQ to Manhattan

Aetna, the country's third-largest health insurer, plans to move its corporate headquarters to Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood by the end of next year, the company said Thursday.

The insurer expects to create 250 jobs in New York, and chief executive Mark Bertolini said Aetna would be looking to hire "innovators from the area's deep talent pool."

The move should also be welcome news to the city's health tech startups, which are constantly looking for established companies to bring in as customers, investors and advisers.

Aetna's arrival could encourage more local entrepreneurs to build software to help insurers, said Dr. Jean-Luc Neptune, entrepreneur-in-residence at Hospital for Special Surgery and a partner in health tech incubator Blueprint Health. Many companies are currently marketing digital solutions for providers.

"Physical proximity will help digital health startups interact with one of the biggest players in the payer market," he said.

The state and the city agreed to give Aetna a combined $34 million to move its headquarters. —J.L.

Drug use higher among LGBTQ students in NYC

Drug use in the city's public high schools is higher among LGBTQ students and those questioning their sexuality than among heterosexual students, according to a new data brief from the city's Health Department.

Gay and bisexual students and those unsure about their sexuality were twice as likely as their straight counterparts to report using illegal drugs in their lifetime, according to the 2015 survey cited in the report.

About 8% of heterosexual high school students reported using illegal drugs, compared with 16% of gay and bisexual students and 17% of questioning students.

Notably, questioning students were four times as likely as straight students to have tried heroin.

The study also found disparities in the misuse of prescription drugs. Transgender students were three times as likely as nontransgender students to report having misused opioid analgesics such as Oxycontin and Percocet in the last year, while gay and bisexual students were more than twice as likely as straight students to report such misuse, the survey found.

"Data affirms that youth who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender in NYC public schools experience enormous social pressures—like bullying, discrimination and abandonment—which diminishes their self-worth and encourages unhealthy behavior," said first lady Chirlane McCray in a statement. "The prevalence of drug misuse among this particular youth population is truly disheartening."

Health Commissioner Dr. Mary Bassett said the city has made a commitment to the LGBTQ community with "mental health and substance-use programs that will help save lives."

Overall, 14% of students surveyed reported misusing prescription drugs in the past year or ever having tried an illicit drug. —C.L.

AT A GLANCE

SURROGACY: Legislators around the U.S. are seeking more legal protections for couples who hire a surrogate mother to bear a child, reported Pew Charitable Trusts. The cost of surrogacy runs about $100,000, including payments to doctors, lawyers, the surrogate birth mother and the company that brokered the arrangement. Gay couples are particularly vulnerable in custody battles.

OPIOID USE: A Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association analysis found that diagnoses of opioid-use disorder are far outpacing the number of people who receive treatment, Modern Healthcare reported. Blue Cross, which analyzed claims data for more than 30 million of its commercially insured members, found that opioid-use disorder diagnoses soared 493% from 2010 to 2016. Meanwhile, the number of members getting medication-assisted treatment only rose 65% over that same period.

PULSE HOLIDAY:Crain's Health Pulse and Pulse Extra will not publish on July 3 and July 4, in observance of Independence Day. Publication will resume on Wednesday, July 5.

NYU Langone brings health dashboard to data-starved cities

Providence, R.I., a midsize city with a population of just under 180,000, doesn't have its own health department. "Not only don't we have local data; we don't have local resources just for the city," said Ellen Cynar, director of Providence's Healthy Communities Office, which coordinates public health initiatives.

However, thanks to the City Health Dashboard, a tool developed by NYU Langone Medical Center and the Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service at NYU, Providence is starting to remedy its data problem. The dashboard, which compiles city- and neighborhood-level data on a range of environmental, behavioral and health measures, was launched as a pilot in Providence as well as Waco, Texas; Flint, Mich.; and Kansas City, Kan., in January.

Now, with the help of a $3.4 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, NYU is working to make the tool available to all U.S. cities with a population of 70,000 or more—about 500 in total.

"I think the lack of data has been key to understanding the lack of activity on population health improvement in many cities," said Dr. Marc Gourevitch, chair of the Department of Population Health at NYU Langone Medical Center and the lead on the project. "You cannot manage what you cannot measure."

Historically, most health-related data in the U.S. have been reported at the state or county level rather than the city level, Gourevitch said. To populate the City Health Dashboard, his team typically pulls data from large national surveys and reanalyzes the information to conform to the geography of a city.

In the case of Providence, the dashboard has allowed Cynar's office to focus on a variety of factors that may be tied to health outcomes in South Providence, a low-income area with a large Hispanic population. For example, the city has a project underway to improve the ability to walk and bike in the area. Using the dashboard, the city found a strong correlation between walkability and safety, Cynar said.

"We're going to focus on it more from that perspective," said Cynar. "The dashboard has changed the way we target a certain intervention and how we talk about it."

The tool is not without its limitations, however. "There are only a few indicators for any particular issue," Cynar said. "In a perfect world, this would have 200 indicators, but that takes a lot of work to do. What it does is give you a little glimpse at one particular content area."

In addition to refreshing data on existing measures included in the City Health Dashboard as frequently as possible, NYU aims to diversify the types of measures included. Current variables fall into the categories of social and economic factors, physical environment, health behavior, health outcomes and clinical care. One can test for a correlation between binge drinking and poor mental health, for instance, or between air quality and premature mortality.

"We hope in the future to be able to bring in less traditional measures, such as food sales, urban blight and other measures that are more novel and emerging as important but not routinely adopted," Gourevitch said.—C.L.

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